


Friday the Thirteenth

by calathea



Category: White Collar
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-28
Updated: 2009-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 09:22:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calathea/pseuds/calathea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter was not a superstitious man, but after the day he'd had so far he was starting to wonder if there was something in this whole Friday the Thirteenth thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friday the Thirteenth

Peter was not a superstitious man, but after the day he'd had so far he was starting to wonder if there was something in this whole Friday the Thirteenth thing.

First there'd been the disaster at breakfast with the toaster and the trailing end of his tie, which had made Elizabeth scream and, in the brief chaos that followed, resulted in the loss of his favourite tie, the pot-holder they'd used to smother the flames, and very nearly Elizabeth's hair. Then, only a couple of minutes after he arrived at the office, he'd accidentally knocked over a stack of files one of the junior agents had piled up on her desk. To his horror, she had started to cry when he tried to help her pick up the scattered papers, though she assured him, in between sniffles, that it was just because of tiredness and frustration. He'd patted her arm awkwardly and then run away, shamefully relieved, when one of the other junior agents came to help her with the files and offer a kleenex. He couldn't stop himself though from flinching nervously every time she came near him the rest of the morning in case the sight of him started her off again. It had almost been a relief to leave the office for his shift on the Caffrey stake-out, at least until Smith, the agent sharing his shift, stood up suddenly form his position at the surveillance monitor and rushed out the back door of the van to make wretched gagging noises by the rear wheel. Once Smith had recovered a little, Peter had sent him home and put in a call for another agent to join him, but now both Smith's replacement and the next shift were caught up in a snarl of traffic and wouldn't be here until long after the official end of his shift.

Peter sighed and kicked the leg of the bench he was working at in annoyance. He was supposed to be taking Elizabeth out to dinner tonight, he thought, checking his watch irritably. He kicked the leg of the desk again, and then sat up, startled, when the knocking continued. His hand automatically moved to hover over his gun as he glanced around the van, and he stood up when the knocking sound came again.

"Hello?" someone said from outside the van. "Um. Delivery?"

Peter cursed and checked the monitor. He'd been focussing on the audio feed from Caffrey's apartment, only glancing at the video feed that his partner would normally have been watching of the outside of the van. Sure enough, there was a guy stood outside holding a tray with two coffee cups and a paper bag. His hat and jacket bore the logo of a coffee shop two blocks away that the agents on the stake-out had gotten into the habit of visiting.

"Hello?" the voice called again, and there was another knock on the door. "C'mon man, I have to make three more deliveries before five."

Hand on the butt of his gun, Peter opened the door cautiously and looked out the back of the van, checking out the immediate surroundings in case this was an ambush. The delivery guy just waited quietly. His name-tag said his name was Juan, but his face was thrown into shadow by the bill of the cap and the angle of the light on the back of the van.

Peter squinted at him, trying to make out his features against the glare of the sun. "I didn't order anything," he said, firmly.

"Agent... Burke?" the delivery guy said, reading from a slip of paper. "Coffee, white, two sugars, and a muffin, cranberry-orange?"

Peter blinked as his normal order was recited. "Well, yeah, but..."

"That's what it says right here," the delivery guy said. He held up the tray. "You _are_ Agent Burke, right, Peter Burke?"

"Yes," said Peter, again, and then took the tray when it was shoved towards him. He retreated a step into the van to put it down, and the delivery guy moved with him, stepping up closer to the door.

"So this is what the inside of a stakeout vehicle looks like," the delivery guy said. "I thought it would be more exciting, you know, all high-tech."

Peter glanced around at the small space, which was covered in coffee cup-ringed files, candy wrappers and half-empty cans of soda. "Not so much," he said, wryly.

While he'd been looking around the delivery guy had hopped up into the back of the van and allowed the door to swing half-closed behind him. Peter blinked at the sudden dimness.

"You can't come..." Peter started.

The delivery guy didn't let him finish. "You wear a different tie with that shirt normally," he said. "What happened?"

"What?" Peter said, surprised by the turn of the conversation.

"What happened to your tie?"

"I set it on fire this morning," Peter answered, distractedly. "How did you know...?"

"You set it on _fire_?" the delivery guy said. He looked up sharply from the file he was apparently trying to read upside down on the table beside him. "While you were wearing it?"

"It was an accident," Peter said, reaching out to close the file. "You can't be in here. This is an FBI vehicle."

"Uh-huh," the delivery guy said, and he reached out and tapped the end of Peter's tie where it lay against his shirt. Peter automatically sucked his stomach in. "I liked the other one better."

Peter just blinked at him, and the delivery guy picked up the two coffee cups, handing one to Peter, who took it automatically, and keeping one for himself. His eyes flicked around the van one more time, and he grinned. "Well, I have to be going," he said, and he pushed open the door of the van and hopped out. "Enjoy your coffee!"

Peter just stared after him. The door clanged shut, only to open again a couple of moments later. Tom Finch, the senior agent in charge of the Caffrey case -- the latest senior agent, since Caffrey's case had pushed at least six others into early retirement or a transfer by this point -- blinked in surprise when he saw Peter standing with a coffee in his hand in the middle of the van. "Agent Burke?" he said, questioningly.

"Finch," Peter said, automatically.

Finch frowned and moved into the van. "Is that coffee fresh?" he asked. "I thought you sent Agent Smith home."

"It was delivered," Peter said, absently, catching sight of movement on the surveillance screen behind Finch's shoulder, the one showing the video feed of Neal Caffrey's apartment door.

"By who?" Finch said, his frown growing darker.

As Peter watched, the flickering image on the screen behind his boss showed a slim young man in a cap bearing the logo of a local coffee shop. As Peter watched, he turned around to face the camera, raised his coffee cup with a grin, and then blew the camera a kiss before disappearing through the door to the apartment.

Peter's jaw dropped.

"Agent Burke!" Finch said, irritably. "Who delivered the coffee?"

"Caffrey!" Peter exclaimed.

Finch's frown grew even deeper. "What?" he said, incredulously. "_Caffrey_ had the coffee delivered? He knows we're here?"

"Who knows we're here?" asked Jones, another agent on the team, coming into the van behind Finch. "Do we need to move the van?"

"What was that about Caffrey?" Jones' partner asked at the same time.

Suddenly the van was filled with babbling voices and questions. As the cacophony of outraged noise around him reached a pitch of noise Peter could no longer ignore, he closed his eyes for a moment and then waded into the noisy argument taking place around him. It was not until he drove home hours later, long past his dinner reservations, that he remembered his cast iron resolution made in that instant: next Friday the thirteenth, he was most definitely taking the day off.


End file.
